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Writing The Hounds and their Half-Hound Master<\/strong><\/p>\n Bowie\u2019s Diamond Dogs<\/em> was originally meant to be a sprawling stage show \u2013 a glam rock dystopia on roller skates. Its heady post-apocalyptic imagery and dramatic shifts in mood and tone certainly give it the feel of something condensed down, stuffed into a tighter suit \u2013 a shape-changer writhing in chains. I wanted to see if I could distil its essence even further, squeeze it into the skinniest jeans of all. Since this was a commissioned work, initially for a live event comprising one Bowie poem after another, I figured I could say nothing in tribute to the man himself that wouldn\u2019t be better said (and better put) by other, more serious fans. So my poem would have to attend to the work itself, would have to be an \u2018unwilling collaboration\u2019.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a neat link, in that \u2018Sweet Thing\u2019 was purportedly Bowie\u2019s first experiment in cut-up lyrics, a technique he lifted from Burroughs, and I would, in turn, be cutting up and cutting back those same lyrics. There\u2019s a danger too \u2013 when lifting from charismatic lyricists, any poem risks having its own character completely overwhelmed.<\/p>\n The first draft had a different title, and stuck rather too closely to a formal trick that seemed good on paper: one line from each song per line of the poem. 11 songs, 11 lines \u2013 poem as track listing. Then I rewrote each of those lines \u2018in my own words\u2019, as English teachers like to say, using synonyms and substitutions. The result seemed a little too <\/em>thin, and at the same time too nebulous. I didn\u2019t really expect anyone to get it. References to \u2018high rises\u2019 and \u2018gangs\u2019 also lent it a whiff of the painfully faux-urban.<\/p>\n So in between pdf proofs of Cold Fire<\/em>, I rewrote the poem completely, this time starting with a title born out of the album artwork. Given the shapeshifting nature of the songs, and of Bowie himself, and given my own fascination (and affinity) with hybrids and shifty creatures, it was imperative that I snare the image of Bowie as half-dog, half-man in the title somehow, and when the right construction came to me, it also gave me the form of the poem. Bowie as Actaeon Gone Wrong, and his dogpack made up of his choicest, bitingest words, roughly in the order they appear on the album. They\u2019re his droogs, his boys, his girls and his selves, all leaping around him.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve recorded a version of the poem in a style that somewhat apes the opening track, \u2018Future Legend\u2019.<\/p>\n Jon Stone<\/em><\/p>\n You can buy the pamphlet here.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n